March 20, 2008 — Materials scientists at Rice University have made the surprising discovery that tiny carbon capsules called buckyballs are so strong they can hold volumes of hydrogen nearly as dense as those at the center of the planet Jupiter.

“Based on our calculations, it appears that some buckyballs are capable of holding volumes of hydrogen so dense as to be almost metallic,” says lead researcher Boris Yakobson, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice. “It appears they can hold about 8% of their weight in hydrogen at room temperature, which is considerably better than the federal target of 6%.”

Yakobson says scientists have long argued the merits of storing hydrogen in tiny, molecular containers like buckyballs, and experiments have shown that it’s possible to store small volumes of hydrogen inside buckyballs. The new research by Yakobson and former postdoctoral researchers Olga Pupysheva and Amir Farajian offers the first method of precisely calculating how much hydrogen a buckyball can hold before breaking.

Using a computer model, Yakobson’s research team has tracked the strength of each atomic bond in a buckyball and simulated what happened to the bonds as more hydrogen atoms were packed inside. Yakobson says the model promises to be particularly useful because it is scalable, that is it can calculate exactly how much hydrogen a buckyball of any given size can hold, and it can also tell scientists how overstuffed buckyballs burst open and release their cargo.

The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research and the Department of Energy.